Sunday, December 30, 2012

During his run for governor in Maine, Republican Paul LePage called for lowering taxes on businesses saying that he was sure it would help Maine "to compete worldwide". He was quoted as saying that he would prefer that Maine would “have no corporate tax at all”. Once he gained the governorship, he didn’t go quite that far, but last year he did sign into law that state’s largest tax cuts ever.

Today Maine is facing a loss of $400M in revenue over the next two years. All the losses can be traced to the tax cuts that Gov. LePage signed in 2011.

So rather than rethink his obvious disastrous tax reduction stance, he has ordered immediate spending cuts totaing $35.5M, with nearly $12M of that coming from funding for education.

That’s great thinking, Gov. LePage. Keep the corporations happy so they’ll fund your next campaign and keep the population stupid so they won’t notice they’re getting fleeced.

On December 24, Mark McKinnon, former Bush aide, published his scathing review of the G.O.P. He specifically attacks Republican intransigence on taxes and the fiscal cliff:

“And so voters look at the ‘negotiations’ and see on one side the president—the guy who just won the election by a substantial margin—willing to compromise by lowering his revenue target from $1.6 trillion to $1.2 trillion and moving the goalpost for tax-rate increases from $250,000 a year to $400,000 a year. And on the other side, they see Republicans…responding with a one-finger salute to everything.”

He goes on to pretty much sum up the current mind-set of the Republican party, (the underlines are mine):

“Increasingly, it is becoming clear that the party is against everything and for nothing.Nothing on taxes. Nothing on gun control. Nothing on climate change. Nothing on gay marriage. Nothing on immigration reform (or an incremental, piece-by-piece approach, which will result in nothing). It's a very odd situation when the losing party is the party refusing to negotiate. It may be how you disrupt, but it is not how you govern, or how you ever hope to regain a majority.

And so, we have a Republican Party today willing to eliminate any prospect for a decent future for anyone, including itself, if it cannot be a future that is 100 percent in accordance with its core beliefs and principles. That's not governing. That's just lobbing hand grenades. If you're only standing on principle to appear taller, then you appear smaller. And the GOP is shrinking daily before our eyes."

I was aware that the A.T.F. has been without a permanent director for the past six years, ever since the NRA goaded Congress into deciding that the position required Senate confirmation; but I did not know how antiquated the A.T.F. methods are or how restricted they are in helping to prohibit gun violence thanks to NRA backed laws passed by a Congress afraid to say "no".

"For example, under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions...

...When law enforcement officers recover a gun and serial number, workers at the bureau’s National Tracing Center here...begin making their way through a series of phone calls, asking first the manufacturer, then the wholesaler and finally the dealer to search their files to identify the buyer of the firearm. About a third of the time, the process involves digging through records sent in by companies that have closed, in many cases searching by hand through cardboard boxes filled with computer printouts, hand-scrawled index cards or even water-stained sheets of paper...

...In an age when data is often available with a few keystrokes, the A.T.F. is forced to follow this manual routine because the idea of establishing a central database of gun transactions has been rejected by lawmakers in Congress, who have sided with the National Rifle Association, which argues that such a database poses a threat to the Second Amendment...

...(The Firearm Owners Protection Act) reduced the falsification of records by dealers to a misdemeanor and put in place vague language defining what it meant to 'engage in business' without a dealer’s license...(The Tiarht amendments) limit the A.T.F.’s ability to share tracing information on firearms linked to crimes with local and state law enforcement agencies and with the public."

Monday, December 24, 2012

Here we go again! (See my post of December 19 re: Michigan Legislature Ready to Replace Law Struck Down by Voters in November.)In November, Denver voters passed a law that prohibits fracking within city limits. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association has filed a lawsuit to overturn the vote. They are saying that voters had no right to ban the drilling practice.

So elections only count if you agree with the results? Next thing you know, Mitt will be showing up in Washington in January ready to take the oath of office.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

In response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA promised "meaningful contributions" to prevent more gun violence. After several days of silence, the NRA finally spoke on Friday. Represented by NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre, the NRA advocated that Congress should "appropriate whatever is necessary" in order to place armed police offices in every school in the United States.

what eye thynk: This is their idea of “meaningful contributions”?!

The Second Amendment was added to our Constitution to compensate for our lack of a standing army. It had nothing to do with gun ownership “rights”--it was simply an expedient way for our nascent nation to defend itself.

In the era of muzzle loading long guns, our forefathers could not have envisioned the damage that a rabid, corporate funded NRA would inflict on this country with their inability to exercise any restraint or common sense on the issue of gun ownership. When a young man tried to blow up an airplane by putting explosives in his shoes, we all started going through airport security in our socks. Another young man murders 20 babies with an assault rifle and the NRA’s answer is more guns. Where is the logic in this? The NRA, and their gun manufacturing corporate sponsors, continue to push the envelope--hidden carry permits, open carry permits, guns on campus, guns in churches, guns in bars, guns in parks, bigger guns with larger magazines… All, of course, under the guise of self-protection and/or sport.

Really, if you’re protecting yourself, do you need an assault rifle? It is not a machine designed for protection, nor--as the NRA and assault rifle owners would have us believe--is it a machine designed for hunting. The name says it all--ASSAULT rifle, designed for military use as an ASSAULT weapon…period.

As for the growing vogue of larger magazines, if you’re a hunter and you need a 100 shot magazine to bag a deer, maybe you should look for a sport more suited to your abilities because you obviously are no marksman.

And now, the NRA’s answer to the proliferation of gun related violence, is not to step back and re-evaluate our society’s love affair with guns and their role in it; but, instead to turn every school into an armed fortress with armed guards and gun-toting principals and teachers. Do we really want our children to be greeted each school day by a flak-jacketed guard toting a Bushmaster .223 assault rifle? Because surely a police issue 15 shot semi-automatic pistol is not going to be defense enough against an assailant armed with the latest in NRA backed military style firepower. Do we really want a visit to the principal’s office to include a view of a rifle rack? Or how about that shoulder holster peeking out from the teacher’s jacket? What kind of message does this give to our children?

Despite what the NRA would have us believe, the answer is not more guns, but fewer. The answer is not looser gun laws, but more gun control. There are too many guns in this country for us to ever become completely gun free, but common sense should dictate that the type of guns that can legally be owned by any private citizen must be tightly regulated. Military type assault weapons or large magazines are not “rights” that are covered by our Second Amendment.

We don't need more gun owners but better vetted gun owners. We should start by closing the gaping loophole in our background check law. It makes no sense that a person who wants to purchase a small caliber hand gun for target shooting must wait three days for a background check at a gun shop, while a person bent on mass destruction can drop into a gun show, hand over the purchase price of an AK47 and walk out with his weapon of choice minutes later.

In the end, gun regulations and closer gun buyer screenings, while providing an excellent place to start, are not the whole answer. As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, until December 14, Adam Lanza was a law abiding citizen, legally able to purchase any gun on the market.

Until we face the fact that the Second Amendment has been turned into nothing more than a legal vehicle for gun manufacturers to make a profit, any "answer" is meaningless. It’s time to put our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness before the right of someone--or some corporation--bent on destroying all three.

"No one seriously believed the N.R.A. when it said it would contribute something “meaningful” to the discussion about gun violence. The organization’s very existence is predicated on the nation being torn in half over guns. Still, we were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant. "

"What he could not do was blame Democrats for failing to take up legislation he could not even get through his own membership in the House...

...The point of the Boehner effort was to secure passage of a Republican plan, then demand that the president and the Senate to take up that measure and pass it, putting off the major fights until early next year when Republicans would conceivably have more leverage because of the need to increase the federal debt limit. It would also allow Republicans to claim it was Democrats who had caused taxes to rise after the first of the year had no agreement been reached.

That strategy lay in tatters after the Republican implosion.

Opponents said they were not about to bend their uncompromising principles on taxes just because Mr. Boehner asked...

...'It has been deeply troubling that Speaker Boehner has spent day after day on the road to nowhere; making it clear Republicans are having trouble governing and only putting us closer to the fiscal cliff,' said Representative Sander M. Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee."

I find it hard to believe that John Boehner thought this obvious piece of political gamemanship would work. But what really amazes me is that the Tea Party Repubicans' reason for refusing to support Mr. Boehner's Plan B appears to be the simple fact that it raised taxes on those making over $1M. Really? These uber-conservative Republicans will do anything to avoid standing up to Grover Norquist. How gutless and how sad.

On Tuesday--and despite the Sandy Hook tragedy--Ohio Governor John Kasich said that he is ready to sign legislation that would make it legal to keep a loaded gun in your car at the Statehouse garage and would also make it easier to renew a gun license and to carry a concealed weapon. He explained his decision this way: "I think, as we move forward, whatever we do, we don't want to erode the second ammendment rights of law-abiding citizens."

Mr.Kasich, up until last Friday, Adam Lanza was a law-abiding citizen.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

This photo was taken in Topeka, Kansas on May 16, 2012 as Westboro Baptist Church members demonstrated during Washburn University's commencement weekend. The nine year old boy was walking with his mother, when he staged his own counter-demonstration. His small, penciled sign reads "God Hates No One".

what eye thynk: It is telling that the Westboro Baptist demonstrator has turned his back to the camera to hide his face, while the young boy holding his small sign looks directly into the lens. His spontaneous reaction and homemade sign are so much more powerful than the factory designed hate wielded by the members of Westboro Baptist Church.

Westboro Baptist leadership had threatened to bring a similar demonstration to Newtown to "(sing) praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment". Angel Action, a volunteer group that dresses in ten foot wings and stands between Westboro demonstrators and grieving families at military funerals said they were ready to come to Newtown if Westboro went through with their threat.

Apparently the Westboro hate-mongers have backed off from their plans and the 26 funerals will be allowed to go on in peace.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Spokespersons for the conservative Christian right responding to the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday…

The American Family Association's Bryan Fischer: “God could have protected the gunman's victims”, but chose not to because "God is not going to go where he is not wanted."

Mike Huckabee: “Well, you know, it's an interesting thing. We ask why there is violence in our schools but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Mike Huckabee, when asked by Fox News to expand on his earlier statement: “Christian-owned businesses are told to surrender their values under the edict of government orders to provide tax-funded abortion pills. We carefully and intentionally stop saying things are sinful and we call them disorders. Sometimes, we even say they’re normal. And to get to where we have to abandon bed rock moral truths, then we ask ‘well, where was God?’ And I respond that, as I see it, we’ve escorted him out of our culture and marched him off the public square and then we express our surprise that a culture without him reflects what it’s become.”

Shirley Phelps-Roper, member of the Westboro Baptist Church on Twitter: “Westboro will picket Sandy Hook Elementary School to sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgement”.

Margie Phelps-Roper, member of the same church, blamed the mass shooting on “fag marriage”. In response to President Obama’s call for meaningful action, she tweeted “Yes. Stop marrying fags & mourn for your sins”.

Other WBC members tweeted using hash tags like #FagMarriageDoomsCT, #GodSentThe Shooter and #TeachYourChildrenToFear God.

what eye thynk:John 4:8 - Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Without love, where is Christ in these Christians? They are so busy promoting their own warped values that ordinary human compassion has become a concept beyond their ken. Christ without compassion is simply un-Christian.

To borrow a phrase from my husband, “These people are taking the Lord’s name in vain”.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Yesterday, in a small town in Connecticut, a young man killed 28 people, including his mother and himself; 20 of those killed were children.

what eye thynk: I have looked at jihadists in the Middle East and thought: what is wrong with these people? What makes them go out and kill total strangers in the name of God? I wondered about a culture where killing people you've never met, people who may be just like you or as different as the desert and the ocean, people who become victims only because they needed to buy flour on the day you decided to blow up the town market. And I felt superior.

Today, I look at our latest shooting tragedy and I realize, we are not better, we are not even close enough to look up and see the soles of their shoes. Jihadists have a purpose--albeit unfathomable to anyone born in our culture--they kill in the name of their faith. And those they kill are faceless strangers.

But yesterday, before turning the gun on himself, a young man murdered 27 people, one at a time, face to face, some of whom he knew personally, 20 of them blameless children. There was no call to martyrdom from his local pastor. There was no revenge being taken for a personal affront. There was only the mindless, senseless taking of life.

I cannot imagine what brings a human being to kill another; but whose sin is worse--the one who kills indiscriminately in blind allegiance to his spiritual leader or one who looks into the eyes of each victim he targets with no promise of paradise to dazzle his vision as he pulls the trigger?

I look at jihadists in the Middle East and I still do not understand. But I no longer feel superior.

"This anti-intellectualism is antediluvian. No wonder a 2009 Pew Research Center report found that only 6 percent of scientists identified as Republican and 9 percent identified as conservative...

The Scotsman of Edinburgh reported in June, 'Pupils attending privately run Christian schools in the southern state of Louisiana will learn from textbooks next year, which claim Scotland’s most famous mythological beast is a living creature.' That mythological beast would be the Loch Ness monster.

The Scotsman continued: 'Thousands of children are to receive publicly funded vouchers enabling them to attend the schools — which follow a strict fundamentalist curriculum. The Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme teaches controversial religious beliefs, aimed at disproving evolution and proving creationism.'"

From where will our next generation of scientists come? If this type of education is any indication, surely not from our conservative Southern states. In twenty years, these same conservatives will be trying to figure out how China has passed us by in scientific and technological advancements.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

While discussing extending middle class lower tax rates while allowing low taxes for the highest incomes to expire in January as opposed to allowing all taxes to go up and huge, mandated spending cuts to take place, Representative James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) had this to say: "It is a terrible position because, by default, Democrats get what they want".

No, Mr. Lankford, the PEOPLE get what they want. It is what President Obama ran on and what Mitt Romney ran against. (In case you're still confused--President Obama won.)

Thanks to a Republican led legislature and a Republican governor, Michigan is now a right to work state. An interesting fact that seemed to get lost in all the hoopla, is that prior to this new legislation being passed, Michigan's constitution already granted workers the right to refuse to join a union as a condition for employment. If a worker was willing to accept lower wages and fewer benefits than his union co-worker, he could not be denied a job based on his union status. At the same time, a worker could not benefit from the rights granted through a union contract without contributing to the union in the form of dues.

what eye thynk: That seemed fair to me. If you don't want to pay for the fight, then you shouldn't gain from the victory. But "fair" is not a word with which the Republican party has any meaningful relationship.

Right to work laws are, plain and simple, union busting tactics designed to increase corporate profits at the cost of the average American worker. And increased corporate profits mean more money in Republican re-election coffers.

American workers in the next job generation are looking at downward mobility for the first time since World War II, while corporate profits and executive salaries and bonuses are higher than ever before.

The Republican party apparently thinks we are stupid--too dim-witted to notice the growing disparity, too pin-headed to realize we are financing it, too weak-minded to ever resent our reduced status.

They seem to believe that there will be no worker backlash in the 2014 election. Now THAT'S stupid.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

President Obama summed up Michigan's decision to join the right-to-work movement this way: "You know, these so called right to work laws, they don't have to do with economics. They have everything to do with politics. What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money."

I am amazed that Michigan, a state with an economy that is built on the pro-union auto industry, would even consider this! This seems to me to be a perfect example of politics divesting itself of all common sense. What am I missing?

Saturday, December 8, 2012

1. In 2011, Texas passed a two year budget that effectively cut all funding for Planned Parenthood over abortion issues, despite the fact that no Planned Parenthood clinic ever used state money to pay for abortions. (They did perform abortions, but that service was funded by private donations.) The Texas budget defunded any clinic that was "affiliated" with abortion providers, thus denying Planned Parenthood any state funding...even for legally available contraception.

With poor women denied access to free contraception, Texas is now facing a Medicaid shortfall as poor women are having babies at a rate higher than expected. It is estimated that the state Medicaid costs for these unplanned babies could go up by $273M in 2014. The Texas legislature is now saying that they may have gone too far in lumping contraception with the abortion issue and perhaps they should re-instate funding for birth control.

??? They deny free birth control, the birth rate sky rockets and they're surprised? What did they think was going to happen?

2. One Texas primary care physician was quoted as saying: “I’ve debated this in Republican clubs with people--people who say it’s not the government’s role to provide family planning. Ultimately, they’re right. But you have to look at what happens if we don’t.”

??? Planned Parenthood provides so much more than "family planning". When are they going to get smart and change their name to something less volatile, like maybe Universal Women's Healthcare? Why continue to emphasize the reproductive part of their practice when it makes them such an easy target?

Friday, December 7, 2012

Ms. Collins' analysis of the failed vote on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities Treaty points out Rick Santorum's small mindedness and Republican Senatorial mindlessness.

"'We did it,' Santorum tweeted in triumph.

...Santorum was upset about a section on children with disabilities that said: 'The best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.'

'This is a direct assault on us and our family!' he said at a press conference in Washington...

There would almost certainly have been plenty of votes to approve the treaty if the Republicans had felt free to think for themselves. The 'no' votes included a senator who had voted for the treaty in committee, a senator who had sent out a press release supporting the treaty and a senator who actually voted 'aye' and then switched when it was clear the treaty was going down anyway...

The big worry was, of course, offending the Tea Party. The same Tea Party that pounded Mitt Romney into the presidential candidate we came to know and reject over the past election season. The same Tea Party that keeps threatening to wage primaries against incumbents who don’t do what they’re told. The Tea Party who made those threats work so well in the last election that Indiana now has a totally unforeseen Democratic senator."

"(Republican) party officials say that if they do not reach an acceptable deal with the White House this month, they will wait until the country reaches the debt ceiling early next year, then refuse to lift it until they get their way on cuts to spending and taxes...

Apparently, they learned nothing from the debacle of 2011, when they first tried this extortionate tactic. The nation lost its AAA credit rating, stock values plunged, and the approval rating of Congress sank to historically low levels. Republicans portray themselves as spending hawks, but that episode cost the Treasury $1.3 billion in higher borrowing costs in 2011, according to the Government Accountability Office. Last week, the Bipartisan Policy Center estimated that the 10-year cost of higher interest rates was $18.9 billion.

Republicans savor that potential catastrophe...Now they want to do it again, and this time they want something the last agreement missed: big cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that primarily benefit middle- and low-income people. Grover Norquist, who leads the party’s anti-tax cult, even suggested that the debt limit be raised only enough to get through a month at a time, so that Republicans can maximize their blackmail power."

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

"In a letter signed by Speaker John Boehner and six other House leaders, Republicans didn’t even bother to assemble their own package of spending cuts and revenue increases; they did a simple copy and paste...

...The offer was a transparent attempt to appear responsive to Mr. Obama’s detailed proposal from last week, without doing any actual math or hard work...

...The only way to produce the necessary revenue is to combine some limits on deductions with an end to the Bush tax cuts on the rich, and Mr. Obama, fortunately, has been adamant he will not consider any plan that does not do so. The Boehner letter, by contrast, actually advocates lowering rates, suggesting that Republicans are still clinging to the notion, rejected by voters, that was put forward by Mitt Romney."

The Senate failed to ratify the U.N. Rights of People With Disabilities Treaty. Despite the fact that Bob Dole was brought into the Senate chamber and sat in his wheelchair facing the Senators as they voted, only eight Republicans could be convinced to vote for it, even though it changes absolutely nothing--zero--in the United States.

what eye thynk: This can only result in the weakening of our position as a world leader in the defense of human rights; but the Republican Party has chosen instead to rally around a U.N. conspiracy theory created entirely out of conservative manufactured whole cloth. Someday, in the not that distant future, when we wake up to find ourselves sidelined in world event decisions, we can thank these close-minded, small thinking, evil-hearted and self-important fools for our seat on the outside.

Rick Santorum, who is no longer a member of Congress, helped to rally Senate Republicans against this treaty by claiming that “critical health-care decisions for a child with a disability” would be turned over to a “faceless and distant United Nations bureaucrat”. How anyone in their right mind would believe that the U.S. would turn the care of our children over to any outside entity is beyond me; but that is exactly what has happened.

I was reading citizen's comments about the Senate’s stand against the treaty this morning and, while many were as appalled as I am, I was amazed at the number of people who were willingly drinking the Santorum kool-aid on this. One woman wrote that she has a disabled child and her ability to discuss his care with her doctor is what keeps her sane. She thanked Santorum for leading the fight against this new treaty. Another praised the Senate for protecting his rights as a husband to continue to make his own decisions about his disabled wife’s care.

It is frightening to me that so many people are so easily lied to; but it is even more frightening that we elect men and women who are proud to be the ones doing the lying.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

1. Prior to this past Friday, the GOP had appointed nineteen of their own to chair committees in the House--all nineteen are white men. After scathing criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, John Boehner has finally appointed a woman. Candace Miller (R-Mich.) will head the House Administration Committee.

This committee oversees the purchase of office supplies, schedules care for the botanical gardens, manages the Library of Congress, oversees the House cafeteria and sees to the disposal of unwanted executive papers. As Al Sharpton pointed out, Mr. Boehner has appointed a woman to serve as office manager, gardener, librarian, lunchroom lady and to make sure the trash is taken out on time.

Earlier this month, John Boehner told his fellow Republicans they needed to find a way to better appeal to women and minorities.

Well, John, may I just say that appointing a woman to serve as head "mommy" is not what I would call a real strong start. Really, this is the best you could do?

2. Statistics don't lie. If we listen only to political pundits, we would assume that the GOP was the party of choice for all affluent U.S. voters while our poor voted for the Democratic candidate. It is not always that simple. On November 6, Asian-Americans, a relatively affluent part of our citizenry, voted for President Obama 3:1. Southern whites who identified themselves as poor to middle-class voted 90% for Mitt Romney.

It may be politically incorrect to say this; but Asian-Americans tend to be better educated than the average American. Feel free to draw your own conclusion here.

Friday, November 30, 2012

A high school in Austin, Texas has issued student ID cards with an embedded microchip that can be used to find the location of a student while on school property. The school sees this as a safety issue; in case of an emergency, they can know the location of any student. The microchips can be used to pay for school lunches and also enable the school to know how many students are in their home rooms at the beginning of the day which is a measure for how much tax money that school district receives.

Andrea Hernandez and her parents fussed about the microchip saying it would let administrators track when Andrea was in the bathroom. The school explained that they do not have someone assigned to sit in front of a computer monitor and track students all day long. “When I need to find (a student), I can enter his random number and I can find him somewhere as a red dot on that computer screen…it’s not about tracking them.”

In an effort to accommodate the Hernandez family, the school agreed to remove the microchip from Ms. Hernandez’ ID card; but the family still refused to allow her to wear the ID and are suing the school on religious grounds, claiming that wearing the ID indicates “submission to a false god”. Their lawsuit cites the book of Revelation, stating that “acceptance of a certain code…from a secular ruling authority” is a form of idolatry. Their representative explained that Evangelicals view this as the “mark of the beast”.

Republican state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst has introduced several bills to outlaw the technology in Texas. She is hoping the publicity from the Hernandez case will help with her fight.

what eye thynk: Once the school agreed to remove the computer chip from Ms. Hernandez’ ID this issue should have been moot. You have to wonder if this child expects to live the rest of her life in a bubble.

College will require a student ID, so I guess there will be no further education.

Employees wear employee IDs, so forget about getting a job.

Welfare recipients carry government IDs, so there will be no government assistance.

Life will be hard, but she won’t be shopping at any of our wholesale clubs, because they issue membership IDs.

If she continues to live in Texas, she won’t be able to vote because that state requires a voter ID.

And, oh, forget about that drivers’ license when she turns 16.

I could go on, but sometimes the religious right makes it so easy to make fun of them that it takes all the joy out of it.

This just proves that, if you look hard enough, you will be able to find a lawyer to take your case and, if it's far right enough, a Republican to champion it--no matter how ludicrous.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Under George W. Bush’s administration, the United Nations negotiated the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which forbids discrimination against the blind, people in wheelchairs, people with AIDS, etc. The treaty has now been ratified by 126 nations, including China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Our Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the treaty in July with bipartisan support, but the United States Congress has yet to ratify it.

Now, former Senator Rick Santorum, is saying he has “grave concerns” about the treaty and has joined his voice to that of current Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) in an attempt to stop the Senate from ratifying it--despite the fact that the treaty itself changes nothing in the way the U.S. treats people with disabilities. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, explained that the treaty simply “raises the (international) standard to our level without requiring us to go further”.

what eye thynk: What is wrong with these people? And why won’t Rick Santorum just go away?

What possible harm can come to this country if we sign a paper that joins us with the rest of the world in protecting those who are most vulnerable? This is a classic no-brainer!

Contrary to a current popular conservative conspiracy theory, President Obama is not planning on turning the United States over to the United Nations. Our sovereignty is safe; there is no need to treat every document that comes out of the U.N. like an attack on the U.S. And yet these people persist. Their mindless adherence to the belief that the U.N. is the enemy can only result in our looking foolish and the rest of the world seeing us as hypocritical bullies--neither of which is a position of strength.

As for Mr. Santorum--who seems to look down upon the rest of us from his lofty perch as self-anointed head Christian--perhaps he should review Matthew 25:40 - And Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me.

"...it was the intelligence community, not officials at the White House or State Department, that eliminated from the talking points used by Rice after the Benghazi attack the suspected involvement of the Libyan jihadist group, Ansar al-Sharia.

According to accounts of former CIA director David Petraeus' closed door testimony about Benghazi to congressional intelligence committees earlier this month, the intelligence community eliminated references to Ansar al-Sharia in the talking points so as not to tip off members of the terrorist group that the CIA believed that they were responsible for the attack.

If Rice had gone beyond her unclassified talking points and said that Ansar al-Sharia was suspected to be behind the Benghazi attacks, no doubt she would now be being hounded for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information."

Ted﻿ Alexandro is a stand-up comedian from New York City. This is his answer to those self-described conservative Christians who claim to speak for God and seem to believe they have exclusive rights to interpreting His word:

"Suppose that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. 'This is a good one,' he says enthusiastically. 'I’m in it, and I think you should be, too.'

Would your reply possibly be this? 'Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.' Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist."

He then goes on to offer a practical solution (the underline is mine):

"...we need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that. A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultrarich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours. Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy."

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Mr. Krugman discusses how Republican disdain for facts effects all they do, whether the discussion be global warming or budget talks.

"What (is) Mr. Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence...

We are, after all, living in an era when science plays a crucial economic role. How are we going to search effectively for natural resources if schools trying to teach modern geology must give equal time to claims that the world is only 6.000 years old? How are we going to stay competitive in biotechnology if biology classes avoid any material that might offend creationists?

And then there’s the matter of using evidence to shape economic policy. You may have read about the recent study from the Congressional Research Service finding no empirical support for the dogma that cutting taxes on the wealthy leads to higher economic growth. How did Republicans respond? By suppressing the report. On economics, as in hard science, modern conservatives don’t want to hear anything challenging their preconceptions — and they don’t want anyone else to hear about it, either."

Saturday, November 24, 2012

After failing in his attempt to limit early voting hours in Ohio’s urban counties and in his attempt to change the way provisional ballots would be counted, (trying to slide the provisional ballot change in on the Friday evening before the election), Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, is trying something new. In the 2016 presidential election, Mr. Husted wants to split Ohio’s 18 electoral college votes and award them by district. “It will not be a winner-take-all state, and you would not have another elections controversy about Ohio because we would not matter as much anymore."

what eye thynk: “We would not matter as much anymore”?! Since when is making your state inconsequential something to be desired? Mr. Husted, foiled in his 2012 voter suppression campaign, seems to be getting an early start on 2016, even if his explanation should make no sense to the voters of Ohio. And someone needs to remind him that any “elections controversy” that happened in Ohio this year was the result of his trying to rig the election for the Republican party.

Registered voters in Ohio break down fairly evenly--48% Democrat, 50% Republican, 2% Independent. We are a true toss-up state, a place where the battle can be won or lost--unless someone is permitted to stack the deck. This year’s Republican designed and highly controversial redistricting packed Democratic voters into the fewest possible districts, (in the urban areas around Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati), leaving the rest of the state’s districts to the Republicans. Because of this biased design, and despite the popular vote going to President Obama 50% to 48%, Mr. Husted’s plan would have given 66% of Ohio’s electoral votes to Mitt Romney with 12 of the state’s 18 electoral votes going to the Republican candidate.

I think the electoral college voting system’s time has passed and we should eliminate it and elect our President by popular vote; but I'm realistic enough to know that is not going to happen any time soon. A more palatable answer might be to keep the electoral college but do away with the winner take all system and instead assign those votes according to the popular results. But allowing the party that holds the majority in the state legislature to design the voting districts in favor of their party and then allowing those voting districts to decide an election is just plain wrong.

Mr. Husted’s idea is simply another attempt to silence Ohio’s Democratic voice--another example of the Republican party putting winning ahead of anything else. They often spout platitudes like “the people have spoken” to legitimize their agenda; but it seems that more and more, the only people they hear are those who speak fluent Red.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

"Two weeks ago John Boehner called himself 'the most reasonable, responsible person here in Washington' and acknowledged that President Obama's re-election solidified the ACA as 'the law of the land'. Yesterday, Mr. Boehner demanded that 'Obamacare' must be included in any budget/debt reduction talks. 'We can't afford it...That's why I've been clear that the law has to stay on the table as both parties discuss ways to solve our nation's massive debt challenge.'"

Reasonable to clueless in fourteen days. Let's hear it for John Boehner!

An addendum to my November 21 post about John Schnatter and John Metz. Late yesterday, both men backed down from their anti-employee positions.

After a lot of bad publicity and a national Facebook campaign for a Friday boycott of Papa John's, Mr. Schnatter has decided that he will provide health care for 100% of his employees.

John Metz was also led to the light when the backlash of his comments began to wash over Denny's franchises everywhere resulting in a huge drop in Denny's business nationwide. After other Denny's owners let their displeasure be known, Denny's CEO John Miller spoke with Mr. Metz. Mr. Miller described the conversation this way: "We recognize his right to speak on issues, but registered our disappointment that his comments have been interpreted as the company’s position."

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Papa John's owner, John Schnatter lives in a castle with a private golf course and a bridge he can raise over his personal moat. He says he can't afford the 11-14 cents the ACA will add to the cost of a pizza, so he is cutting all his employees' hours to keep them below the level where employer paid health care is required.

John Metz, who owns 40 Denny's franchises, says he is also being forced to cut all his employees hours. "'I think it's a terrible thing. It's ridiculous that the maximum hours we can give people is 28 hours a week instead of 40. It's going to force my employees to go out and get a second job." Mr. Metz says he is also going to begin adding a 5% "Obamacare surcharge" to every dinner check. He added that if customers don't like the surcharge, "they can reduce the amount of tip they give to the server".

what eye thynk: The obvious question for Mr. Metz is...if you're cutting your employees' hours to avoid paying for health care, where is the money from the 5% surcharge going? Extra lining for your own pocket?

Business owners like John Schnatter and John Metz have always been around.

Thankfully, we also live in a world with people like Microsoft's Bill Gates who is able to think beyond "me" and has decided to share his wealth wherever he sees a need. (Mr. Gates once asked Mitt Romney to help fund one of his foundation's programs. Mr. Romney declined.)

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

The state of Wisconsin has allowed same day voter registration at polling locations since 1976. Governor Scott Walker is trying to stop this practice because he feels that “poll workers, who are wonderful volunteers…in most cases are retirees. It’s difficult for them to handle the volume of people who come at the last minute”.

what eye thynk: Will the Republican party please grow up?! Your systematic attempts to suppress the Democratic vote didn't work. It's time you recognized that and let it go.

Mr. Walker wants us to believe that same day voter registration is too “difficult for (retirees) to handle”. Okay, now that is insulting. Getting older doesn’t necessarily make people incompetent. I can think of a lot of incompetent 20 year olds…and most of them seem to work in my city’s government offices. Note to Mr. Walker: Don’t try to blame your voter suppression campaign on the age of your poll workers. We’re still alert enough to recognize self-serving phoniness when we hear it…and condescension doesn’t play well with us either.

Senator Glenn Grothman, Republican from West Bend, is also in favor of eliminating same day registration. “If fraud is going on, I think it will be harder to commit fraud (if we eliminate) same day registration”. The important word here is “if”. Scot Ross, who heads the left leaning group One Wisconsin Now, answered Senator Grothman with this statement: “To date, no Republican has been able to show that there is any impersonation voter fraud and every study shows that there is no rampant voter impropriety in the state of Wisconsin or around the country”.

It’s like the Republican party has created this great solution so they need to manufacture a problem for it.

For many years, Wisconsin has had one of the highest voter turnout rates. Much of this is attributed to the ease of same day registration in that state. On November 6, Milwaukee’s voter turnout was an amazing 87%. Of that number, 17% registered to vote that day. You'd think that Gov. Scott would be proud of his state's voting statistics, but that doesn't play into his Republican game plan.

Statistically, those who take advantage of same day registration are largely students and the poor, both groups of people who move frequently. Wisconsin Republicans have expressed concern that these groups could easily impersonate another voter because there is no way to verify a new voter’s address. (Do they really verify the address of every voter who registers early, or do they just accept the proof the voter presents at the time…the same proof a new voter would present to same day registrars?)

Mr. Walker is so concerned about non-existent voter fraud in his state that he is also planning to re-introduce voter I.D. regulations that were shot down by federal courts for this latest election cycle. I would think that, logically, any I.D. law would render their voter impersonation paranoia moot, but logic seems to have no place in this era of winning at all costs and fairness be damned.

Personally, I think all the new voter laws that Republican run states passed, (or attempted to pass), backfired and ended up making Democrats so angry that they voted in even larger numbers than they might have if the Republicans had just left the issue alone. Nevertheless, some right-wingers insist on continuing to ring the same bell. For a party that sees itself as a notch above the average man, they sure are proving to be slow learners.

The Oxford University Press' Oxford Dictionary has chosen its Word of the Year for 2012: omnishambles. Omnishambles is defined as " a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations".

Sunday, November 18, 2012

So now that Romney has been sent home in ignominious defeat, Republican governors are suddenly faced with the fact that the ACA is not going away and they are weeks from having to decide to set up their own insurance exchange or let the federal government do it for them. The Health and and Human Services Department has granted these procrastinators a reprieve until December 14 to choose between the you-do-it or we'll-do-it-for-you options and most are hunkered down in their home states deciding how to proceed...except for governors like Rick Scott in Florida who is now saying that he is open to "compromise" on the ACA issue.

what eye thynk: What "compromise"? The time for discussion has passed.

The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. The citizens of Florida are going to have health care whether you want them to or not.

Friday, November 16, 2012

This past Wednesday, at the exact time that John McCain was talking to reporters and complaining that the White House was withholding data and demanding more information about the attack on our mission in Benghazi, he was skipping a classified intelligence briefing to which he had been invited. The subject? Benghazi.

What a self-serving phoney. I have always respected him, but he is making it hard to continue.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

1.Republicans in Congress seem surprised that President Obama is adamant about raising tax rates on the wealthy.

Why is this a surprise? He ran his whole re-election campaign on this platform. Did they think he would change his mind once he re-gained the White House? Maybe take a cue from their own Etch-a-Sketch candidate--you know, the one who lost the election so resoundedly?

2.John Boehner and the House Republicans are still beating the no-new-taxes drum, claiming they would "hurt our economy and make job creation more difficult".

What part of we-heard-that-argument-and-rejected-it-in-favor-of-the-plan-promoted-by-President-Obama are these people not understanding? I would think the election results made this perfectly clear--to quote Mr. Boehner, "The American people have spoken".

3.President Obama is considering Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, for Secretary of State. Senator John McCain has attacked her for her initial report on the attack on our mission in Benghazi. Senator Lindsey Graham went so far as to say that he would oppose her appointment as one "who is up to their eyeballs in the Benghazi debacle". President Obama called their attacks on Ms. Rice, who only reported the facts as they were relayed to her, "outrageous".

What did they expect her to do? Initial information was confusing and incomplete. That happens in a situation like this. When more accurate information was available, it was reported. Would they have been happier if she had made facts up out of whole cloth a la Mitt?

Monday, November 12, 2012

Today's quote is dedicated to the people of Maryland, Maine and Washington, the first states to approve same sex marriage by popular vote...and to Minnesota where they voted to keep a ban on same sex marriage out of their state constitution.

monday quote: I hate the word homophobia. It is not a phobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole. (Morgan Freeman, actor, 1937 - )

Saturday, November 10, 2012

In the four days since Tuesday’s election, John Boehner has indicated that he is willing to discuss increasing revenues, but not by raising tax rates. Instead he and his fellow Republicans in the House want to reform the tax system, lowering tax rates for everyone while closing loopholes. They believe that these changes will result in faster economic growth which will further increase revenues. Mr. Boehner has also suggested that we extend the Bush era tax cuts for another year to give congress time to come up with a new tax plan.

Conservative strategist Brent Bozell has proposed a Republican manifesto in which they refuse "to participate in any lame-duck session that furthers the leftist Democratic agenda; that they defund Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act; and end federal funding for Planned Parenthood and PBS".

what eye thynk: I want to look at Brent Bozell first, because he's easiest. Mr. Bozell, sit down and shut up. Your side lost. Learn to deal with it.

Okay, now for Speaker Boehner…What he is proposing is essentially the failed Romney/Ryan plan with a little double-speak mixed in to make it sound new and plausible. On the same day he told the President that the House was willing to include increased revenues in budget talks, Mr. Boehner told ABC News, “Raising tax rates is unacceptable”. Again, Republicans want to lower taxes saying that they can increase revenue by closing undisclosed loopholes. Where are the new ideas? They apparently believe that if they keep repeating themselves everyone will eventually acquiesce.

What will it take for them to realize that the time for Republican policy chest thumping is past? One would think that Tuesday's election results would at least give them pause; but, no, they are still in no-one-should-lead-but-us mode. They refuse to accept the fact that the American people looked at their tired ideas and found them deficient. We rejected their trickle down candidate in favor of a man who has vowed to raise taxes for those who can best afford it.

Shared sacrifice is not anathema to economic success. If I can contribute 20% of my income to supporting this country, the least a millionaire can do is accept an equally measured liability.

During the Clinton presidency, tax rates were at their highest in modern history; our economy boomed, our budget balanced and when Mr. Clinton left the White House, we had a budget surplus. It took W and his Republican cronies only eight years to turn that surplus into the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression.

As for Mr. Boehner’s suggestion that we extend Bush’s tax cuts for another year: NO! Procrastination is not an solution! You had four years to get it right. Why would anyone believe that twelve more months would make any difference, especially since the Republican answer seems to be to re-hash the the same tired ideas that brought us the October 2007 meltdown--the same tired ideas that they have been promoting since 2008--the same tired ideas that lost them the election in 2012--the same tired ideas that the American people soundly rejected on Tuesday.

In a USA Today interview on November 8, Mr. Boehner said, “We need to find more effective ways to talk to the American people about who we are as a party. Frankly, our opponents have done a pretty good job of labeling us as against women, against minorities. We need to do a more effective job communicating with the American people."

A good place to start would be to listen to the American people’s choice for President.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

what eye thynk: Okay, I'm trying to be mature about yesterday's election results, (and I really do believe every word of my "We proved..." post which you can read further down this page), but this was just too good to pass up: